Mr Gaynor (62) faced three charges of illegally accessing personal
information held by An Garda Síochána
and of disclosing it without authority, under the provisions of section 22 (1)
of the Data Protection Acts 1988 and 2003.

He was convicted on two of those charges and fined €2,500 for each
offence.

Judge John O’Neill said that in his view Mr Gaynor had not given
convincing evidence of why he was contacting a serving garda.

Mr Gaynor pleaded guilty to 69 other charges but pleads not guilty on
the three related to accessing the Garda information.

Remy Farrell SC for the Data Protection Commissioner told the court Mr
Gaynor had allegedly provided tracing reports to three credit unions - in
Balbriggan, Lucan and Citybus Credit Union - on individuals they hoped to take
action against for non-payment of debts.

He had allegedly obtained the information from Detective Garda Paul
Cullen, a member of the Garda National Immigration Bureau, who had “little
cause to be accessing information” on the three individuals concerned.

Assistant data protection commissioner Tony Delaney told the court that
in an interview with Det Garda Cullen at the GNIB headquarters on March 18th
2014, the garda had admitted accessing all the records on the individuals
concerned.

After questioning Det Garda Cullen for several minutes in the witness
box, Mr Farrell made an application to have him treated as a hostile witness.

The detective contended Mr Gaynor, with whom had served as a garda for
about 20 years, was in fact an “informal informant” who would telephone him
from time to time with information about individuals who may be “of interest”
to An Garda Síochána.

He said he may have “inadvertently” disclosed information to Mr Gaynor
after the private detective contacted him in this context, but that he never
provided information directly from the screen in front of him when logged into
either the Pulse or GNIB databases.

Mr Cullen said that when Mr Gaynor had given him a name, an address or a
car number, he would immediately check them on one of the systems available to
him.

“He was offering me information,” the garda said.

He said he did not confirm any information to the private detective
other than to tell him it was “not of interest to the gardaí”.

Mr Farrell asked at one stage why Mr Gaynor would be passing information
on individuals to Mr Cullen and whether they were perhaps members of
“al-Qaeda”.

Judge John O’Neill said he had “no difficulty” in having Mr Cullen
treated as a hostile witness and said he agreed with prosecuting counsel that
the detective was “playing with words”.